Qualifying prospects means deciding whether a prospect deserves your team’s time before that time gets spent. The simplest way I know to do it is to grade every prospect on two things at once: how well you can help them, and how much they can help your business grow.
I use five factors and score each one from 1 to 5:
- Revenue potential: how much they could realistically spend with you this year.
- Future potential: how likely they are to come back or refer others.
- Seriousness: how ready they are to buy, and how urgent the problem is.
- How well you can solve it: whether you can actually deliver what they need.
- Closeness to your ideal customer: how much they look like the clients who do best with you.
Add the five scores together. The higher the total, the more of your team’s time the prospect deserves.
The method is simple on purpose. A grade that takes two minutes gets done on every prospect. A 40-field scoring model gets done on the ones someone remembers to fill in.
A lead isn’t a qualified prospect
A lead is anyone who raised their hand: filled out a form, called, was referred, downloaded something. A qualified prospect is a lead you’ve decided is worth sales time.
You’ll also hear MQL (marketing-qualified lead) and SQL (sales-qualified lead). The terms mean different things at different companies. One company’s SQL is a first meeting, another’s is a deal that’s nearly closed. Write down what each stage means at your company before you measure anything against it.
Grade twice: before the first call and after it
You can’t know everything before you talk to someone. So the grade happens in two passes.
Before the first conversation, score what you can see: the likely size of the work, whether they look like your best clients, whether it’s work you do well. That provisional grade answers one question: is a conversation worth having?
After the first real conversation, finish the grade. Now you know who decides, how urgent it is, whether the money and timing are real, and whether the problem is one you can solve. That completed grade decides whether the opportunity gets your best people.
The five factors, and how to score them
Every factor needs a 1, a 3 and a 5 that everyone on the team reads the same way. Use the full range. A grade where everything scores 3 or 4 tells you nothing. Here’s a starting rubric to adapt to your business.
1. Revenue potential
The economic value of the likely engagement this year.
- 5: a project or relationship at the size of your best clients.
- 3: a worthwhile engagement, smaller than your typical one.
- 1: work so small it would cost more to sell and manage than it would bring in.
It doesn’t measure readiness to buy. That’s seriousness. A small budget doesn’t automatically mean a low score, either. Sometimes it’s a scope conversation, and a prospect who can’t afford your full offering may be a good fit for a smaller version of it.
2. Future potential
The realistic chance of more work or referrals beyond the first engagement.
- 5: clear follow-on work you can already see, or a well-connected buyer in a market you want more of.
- 3: plausible future work, nothing specific.
- 1: a one-time need with no obvious next step.
This factor is here because the first deal often isn’t the real prize. Fit isn’t the same as big. In our own book, which is a small sample and not a rule, some of the largest relationships started as modest first projects with companies that fit well, and some of the biggest opening deals never went anywhere afterward. Grade only on the size of the first invoice and you’ll pass on the accounts that would have compounded.
3. Seriousness
The likelihood that a real buying decision is coming.
- 5: a real problem, a reason to solve it now, money set aside, and the person who decides is involved.
- 3: a real problem without a deadline, or a deadline without anyone who can say yes.
- 1: curiosity. They’re collecting information for a decision that may never happen.
This is the factor most likely to be scored too generously, because enthusiasm in a first meeting feels like intent. Ask who else is involved in the decision, what happens if they do nothing, and when they need it solved.
4. How well you can solve it
Whether you can deliver what they need, at a quality you’re proud of, with the people you have.
- 5: work you do often and do well, with capacity to take it on.
- 3: work you can do, with some stretch in skills, capacity or timing.
- 1: work outside what you do well, or a promise you’d have to scramble to keep.
The salesperson shouldn’t score this one alone. We learned that the expensive way, and now our delivery team signs off on what sales is promising before it’s signed: that we can produce it on time, on budget and at the expected quality, at the price stated.
5. Closeness to your ideal customer
How much the organization looks like the clients who get the best results with you and stay the longest: industry, size, how they buy, how they work.
- 5: looks like your best clients in most of the ways that matter.
- 3: a partial match.
- 1: a type of client that has rarely worked out for you.
This factor only works if your ideal customer is written down, agreed and current. When we rebuilt our own buyer personas, they were about four years old, and we’d been picturing our ideal customer as a bigger company than the ones who actually became our best clients. If your profile describes the client you wish you had, this factor will mislead you.
Some scores stop the process on their own
The total isn’t the only rule. A big revenue score shouldn’t be able to make up for a poor ability to deliver, so set a few deal-breakers that apply whatever the total:
- A 1 on how well you can solve it stops the pursuit. A prospect you can’t serve well is a bad prospect no matter how good the other four scores look.
- A 1 on closeness to your ideal customer needs a deliberate reason to continue, like a new market you’ve chosen to enter.
- A 1 on seriousness after the first conversation moves them to nurture, whatever else they score.
A worked example
Two prospects, with illustrative scores.
Prospect A is a large company asking for a substantial one-time project. They’re outside the industries where you’ve done your best work, there’s no obvious follow-on work, and your delivery team sees complexity they haven’t handled before. They’re energetic and want to move quickly.
Prospect B is smaller. They look like several of your longest-standing clients, they have a problem you solve regularly, and there’s a clear path to more work once the first project is done.
| Factor | Prospect A | Prospect B |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue potential | 5 | 3 |
| Future potential | 2 | 5 |
| Seriousness | 4 | 4 |
| How well you can solve it | 3 | 5 |
| Closeness to your ideal customer | 2 | 5 |
| Total | 16 | 22 |
A gets a 5 for revenue because the first project is large, a 2 for future potential because nothing points to a second one, and a 3 on ability to solve because delivery flagged real stretch. B gets a 5 for future potential because the next project is already visible. They score the same on seriousness, but that doesn’t make them equal: A’s urgency is about a one-time deadline, and B’s is about an ongoing problem.
On a size-only filter, A wins. On the grade, B gets your best people’s time, and A gets a careful conversation about scope and delivery risk before anyone writes a proposal.
What to do with the score
The cutoffs below are illustrative operating thresholds. Use them if you need a rule today:
- 20 to 25: pursue now, with your best people.
- 14 to 19: worth a conversation, with a clear question to answer before more time goes in.
- 13 or under: decline politely, refer them, or keep them warm with marketing until something changes.
Then calibrate. After your first 25 to 50 graded prospects, compare the scores with what actually happened: which ones closed, how big they were, how the work went and whether they stayed. Move the cutoffs if your results say you should. The total tells you where to look first. The individual scores tell you why.
How to put this into your sales process
The method only works if it survives past the first few weeks. A simple way to build it in:
- Leadership writes down the 1, 3 and 5 for each factor, and sales and marketing agree them.
- Whoever handles a new lead gives it a provisional grade.
- The salesperson completes the grade after the first qualification conversation.
- Delivery confirms factor 4 for anything unusual, large or new.
- The five scores and the total live in your CRM, as fields on the prospect.
- Anything below your threshold gets a next step: one question to answer, nurture or a polite no.
- Every quarter, check the grades against outcomes, and adjust the rubric.
Someone has to own the call when two people disagree about a score, and that person should say out loud that grading a prospect low is the job working. If a low grade feels like failure, people stop grading honestly.
Only graded prospects belong in your forecast
A pipeline full of maybes makes the forecast look better than the business will. Deals on a long sales cycle rarely die on a date anyone records. They go quiet, and while they wait they sit in the pipeline at full value.
The grade is the gate. Give ungraded prospects their own status outside the pipeline, and only move a prospect into the forecast once the completed grade clears your threshold. When a deal has gone silent for longer than your normal cycle, decide in advance when it counts as lost. Then compare the grades of the deals you won and lost. Over time that tells you which factors your team scores too generously.
Agree on what qualified means first
If sales and marketing can’t agree what a qualified prospect is, settle that before anything else. You can’t grade against a definition you don’t have.
It also helps to be clear about which numbers belong to whom. Marketing’s job is to provide more qualified at-bats for the people who sell. It influences how many qualified prospects you get. It usually doesn’t control whether sales follows up or closes. When sales knows which prospects became customers, that has to flow back to marketing, because it’s one of the most useful things marketing can learn.
How this compares with BANT, MEDDIC and lead scoring
BANT (budget, authority, need, timing) mostly covers what this method calls seriousness, and need overlaps with whether you can solve the problem. It doesn’t ask whether this is a client you want, which is what revenue potential, future potential and closeness to your ideal customer are for.
MEDDIC (metrics, economic buyer, decision criteria, decision process, identify pain, champion) is a framework for working a complex deal in depth. The two fit together well: the grade decides which prospects deserve that depth of work.
Lead scoring in marketing software usually adds points for activity: pages visited, emails opened, forms filled. That tells you who is busy, which is a useful signal about intent. Whether they’re worth sales time is a separate question, and the grade answers it.
Saying no is part of grading
A low grade is a decision. Plenty of times what I’ve actually thought is that a company shouldn’t hire us, and we’ve talked companies out of working with us. Those calls cost money in the short term. They also tend to come back around, because the trust it builds turns people into advocates.
Revenue alone can’t carry a grade either. A client who pays well but pulls you away from the work you’re trying to build has a cost the invoice doesn’t show.
Common questions about qualifying prospects
What are the most important factors for a qualified lead?
Revenue potential, future potential, seriousness, how well you can solve their problem and how closely they match your ideal customer. Together they tell you how well you can help them and how much they can help your business grow.
Should every factor count equally?
Keep the scoring equal so it stays simple, and use deal-breakers for the factors that matter most. A low score on your ability to deliver should stop a pursuit on its own.
Who should grade prospects?
Whoever first handles the prospect gives a provisional grade, the salesperson completes it, and delivery confirms whether you can solve the problem. Leadership sets the rubric, and sales and marketing agree it together.
How often should we re-grade?
Whenever something real changes, like a new decision-maker, a budget or a deadline, and in a regular pipeline review for anything that hasn’t moved in a while.
Where to go from here
Write down the 1, 3 and 5 for each of the five factors, add your deal-breakers, and agree them with sales and marketing. Then grade your current pipeline and see what it tells you.
If you’d like help building that definition and the marketing that feeds it, that’s the kind of work I do as a fractional CMO. You can start a conversation on Work With Me.
